Quoting TedTAce (Reply 7):
Odd, I didn't see the ads before the Oscars last night.

Hence why I suggested you elaborate more in the opening post. It implied nothing more than your general knowledge of their new campaign, which again has been around since the debut of Vista. Either way, without getting super technical, the whole Wow thing is garbage. Vista really doesn't have anything worthy of a jaw drop.

Quoting IFEMaster (Reply 17):Well I've got the pleasure of attending the developer track of one of their 'Live Across America' launch events today. They've promised to wow me. I hope I am wowed, but I don't expect to be.

Trip report later.

Just thought I'd follow up on this...

So the launch event was lame, in a word. A company like Microsoft, with all their money and resources and aggressive marketing techniques, should make light work of impressing those in the IT industry, at least in respect to their hospitality and hype. Unfortunately, they failed miserably.

First point - no signage anywhere. I wondered around the Anaheim Convention Center for a good 20 minutes before finding anything remotely Microsoft, and even she wasn't working for them - she was on her way out and I saw she was carrying a Microsoft bag, so I asked, and she pointed me to a back hall on the second floor.

I get there, and the only signage is a 'Wow Starts Now' banner, and that's it. There were no handouts, no product literature, no agendas or bios on the presenters, and most disappointingly - no freebies. There were a handful of 'Vista Partner' vendors there, touting their products, but they were placed awkwardly in a corner of a fairly empty hall.

The presentations were diabolical - bad lighting, uncomfortable seating, and poor visibility of projected images and screenshots. The content was worse; the presenters basically harped on about aero and 3d acceleration (bear in mind this is a developers track - we don't care about how pretty Windows is). Questions that were asked about changes to WinAPI and processing constraints and registry changes and developing within their (rather lame) new security features went largely or completely unanswered.

I left very frustrated, underwhelmed, and utterly unimpressed. Unfortunately, I have to get answers to these questions because I still have to be able to develop on this platform, and that means attending a 'Developer's Round Table' in Portland in a few weeks.

To be sure I get answers, I've forward my questions to the organizer to give them time to prepare their answers.

Quoting IFEMaster (Reply 19):I left very frustrated, underwhelmed, and utterly unimpressed. Unfortunately, I have to get answers to these questions because I still have to be able to develop on this platform, and that means attending a 'Developer's Round Table' in Portland in a few weeks.

My condolances on your pending waste of time.

Vista is an upgrade, nothing more, and probably something less. Maybe SP1 will have something of interest, but until the hardware catches up, it's smoke and mirrors the likes of which only W could be excited/jealous about.